


“For you I sigh, just for you only”

by canyouseemyspark



Series: Dorne [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 09:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canyouseemyspark/pseuds/canyouseemyspark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "I still think you're pretty"</p>
            </blockquote>





	“For you I sigh, just for you only”

**Author's Note:**

> Posted to the ASOIAF kinkmeme over at LJ

She lay in bed for weeks after that awful day, her face wrapped in bandages and pain coursing through her whole body. On the fourth day, she awoke from a fevered dream ( _Her father was standing in the darkness, blood pouring from his chest with his arms stretched out. “Come, child,” he said and when she embraced him, she could smell wind and the stench of death_ ) and began tearing at her face, trying to get rid of the awful itching, the throbbing in her ear and cheek. When her nails dug into the wound, she screamed loudly and suddenly her Dornish guards were in the room, calling for the maester. After that, it all went black.

More dreams followed. Her father was there again, smiling, and she saw her uncles Renly and Tyrion, her mother, the Kingsguard, sweet Tommen and foul Joffrey. When two faceless knights got on their horses and began to rush towards each other, Myrcella realized she was at a tourney. She began to push her way through the crowd as the members of court cheered and shouted for the winner. The Mountain had won, as always, and he turned his horse towards her. As he approached, the crowd faded away and suddenly he was aiming his lance towards her, racing as if she was a challenger. Myrcella tried to scream as the lance hit the side of her face and she looked up to see the Mountain removing his helm. Underneath was the face of Gerold Dayne with his silver hair and his cruel smile, and with a laugh he turned his horse around and began to race against her again. Myrcella ran, ran as fast as she could but her feet wouldn’t move, and she cried and was suddenly in her father’s arms. “Come, child,” he said again, but his chest opened up and her gown was soaked with blood and worms and wine.

That time she woke up with another scream but there were no guards, only beautiful Arianne with young Trystane. As a child, for as long as remembered, Myrcella had always wanted a sister, someone to share gowns with and tell secrets to. Her mother would sit beside her at feasts to talk to her and sometimes she brought her pretty things but Myrcella couldn’t tell her about the baker’s boy who would slip her an extra cake at dinnertime or her dreams of visiting Yi Ti with Tyrion, the land of basiflisks and jungles he had told her stories about. She felt like she could tell Arianne everything and she nearly did. In her first few days at Dorne, she sat with her feet in the water and told Arianne of those she liked in King’s Landing, of her favorite places to go, of the adventures she and Tommen would make up in their minds. Arianne’s favorite stories, however, were of mother and Joffrey, and when Myrcella told her of the fights she overheard between uncle Tyrion and her mother, Arianne had smiled and kissed Myrcella’s forehead, just like a proper older sister.

Arianne was sitting on the edge of the bed now and she reached out to put her hand tenderly on the side of Myrcella’s face. It was then that Myrcella realized the bandages, and the pain, were gone.

“How are you feeling, my love?” Arianne asked, a strange smile on her face.

“I had the most awful dreams.”

Myrcella felt tears sting her eyes and Arianne looked behind her to her brother, who moved closer to the bed.

“You’re awake now, princess, and you have nothing to fear,” Arianne took Myrcella’s hands in hers, “Trystane and I wanted to see how you were feeling, and perhaps you and I can have a talk later.”

“Are you going to tell me a new story?” Myrcella asked.

Arianne nodded but she wasn’t smiling anymore, “Yes, princess, and you’ll have to listen very closely because soon you’ll have to tell a story of your own.”

Trystane crawled into the bed, sitting next to his sister close to Myrcella. Myrcella was rather fond of Trystane. He reminded her a little of Tommen with his sweet smile and his fondness for animals. Sometimes, he would have foul moods when his father wouldn’t let him ride or when he was forced to eat his turnip greens but he would always be back laughing and smiling within minutes. He had been particularly cross with his father one day ( _I don’t know how anyone could be cross with Prince Doran_ , Myrcella thought, _he’s so quiet and gentle, and nothing like anyone I know at King’s Landing_ ) and refused to speak to him, but that night Myrcella had seen Trystane sneak into the water gardens and put all the blood oranges into a basket by his father’s chair.

“I have a scar too, do you want to see?” Trystane asked.

Myrcella put her hands to her face and suddenly felt it, a dry jagged cut running down the side of her face, from her hairline to her jaw. The skin around it felt strange, oddly stretched as if it wasn’t hers at all. She moved her hands to the side of her head and instead of her ear was a stub, as if someone had rolled up her ear and sowed it in on itself. _This is all just another dream_ , Myrcella thought, _but I want to wake up_. Before a single tear could fall down her tainted cheek, Trystane was untucking his shirt from his breeches and lifting it up so his whole chest was bare. He pointed to a pale scar running sideways across his ribs, standing out against his dark skin.

“I was sad about mine at first too but you’ll get used to it,” He stated.

“What happened?” Myrcella asked, sniffling.

Trystane crossed his legs, like he always did when he was getting ready to tell a particularly grand story.

“Well, I almost died—”

Arianne interrupted, chuckling, “That’s not how I remember it.”

“You were talking to Daemon the whole time, what would you know?” He snapped, before turning again to Myrcella, “I was riding with Quentyn on his horse but he turned too quickly so I fell and got caught under it. The horse stepped on my chest and they had to sew it up with a needle and thread, like a hankerchief. I think he was probably trying to kill me, he was scared because he knew I’d be a better rider than him when I got bigger. And a better swordsman, and a better knight probably too.”

With that, Arianne leaned her head back and started laughing. Myrcella wasn’t sure what was so funny but Arianne’s loud laughter (Mother would call it improper, Myrcella thought, she would say she laughs like father when he’s drank too much) led Myrcella to descend into a fit of giggles. Trystane’s brow furrowed for a moment before a sheepish grin appeared on his face. He could never resist other people’s happiness. When they were all silent, Myrcella remembered her earlier sadness and raised a hand to her scarred face once again. To her surprise, Trystane leaned over and took her hand in his.

“I still think you’re pretty.” Myrcella smiled.

\---------

Time went by quickly in Dorne. Myrcella spent her days riding, swimming, making handkerchiefs for Prince Doran and the other lords at Sunspear, and – her favorite activity – playing cyvasse with Trystane. She remembered when he first taught her the game all those years ago, and how clumsy her fingers were when she would pick up the pieces and try to decide her next move. She remembered how he never laughed at her when she made mistakes but would try to give her hints and tips, even when it meant his own loss. Once she had watched him play with his cousin Obella – he beat her in five moves – but he always took his time with Myrcella and sometimes their games would go on for an hour or two before they would realize they had missed dinner. While they played, he would tell her stories of all he had seen and done that day.

Trystane had a way of making the mundane seem fantastic. From the way he told it, a trip to the stables could sound like the most exciting adventure. Sometimes, he would leave notes for Myrcella in her room with little riddles scribbled in his almost illegible handwriting. When Myrcella solved it, she would get another riddle, and another, until finally he would give her a prize. Sometimes it would be some strange book he found in his father’s library, or a beautiful shell from the beach. One time he gave her the perfectly peeled skin off an orange he had eaten earlier that day and he had tossed his head back, his black hair shining in the Dornish sun, when Myrcella told him this was no proper reward at all. And yet perhaps that was her most favorite gift of all – she had kept that orange peel hidden under her bed until it began to shrink and smell, and her serving maid had thrown it away. Myrcella had cried then, and she wasn’t sure why.

Her years in Dorne did not change the fact that she was still a daughter of Cersei Lannister and no fool. She knew that outside her cocoon, the shell which Doran and Trystane had so perfectly crafted for her, people were fighting and killing and dying. Her brother, like her father, was lying dead in King’s Landing. Tommen was king now and it was strange to her that her little brother with golden curls, the same boy who used to sneak into her rooms whenever he had a nightmare, was now sitting on the Iron Throne. Sometimes she would pray that he wouldn’t meet the same fate as the two before him and that thought made her wish to run to King’s Landing and bring him here, to teach him cyvasse as Trystane had taught her and to play with him in the water gardens beneath Doran’s watchful eyes.

Her life continued as it had before that day when Gerold Dayne had maimed her and she thought of her scar only when she met new lords and ladies, when they would look at her with that mixture of pity and revulsion in their eyes. When Trystane noticed her frowning, he would lean in and whisper some particularly improper piece of information about the individual (“Ynys Yronwood bought a love potion for Lord Allyrion once and it ended up giving him the runs for a week!”) and she would dissolve into giggles, her scar all but forgotten.

On this day, however, she didn’t think that even Trystane’s japes would make her feel better. She was taking a pile of books she had borrowed back to Prince Doran’s library when she realized she had forgotten one of the volumes on her desk. She returned to her rooms to retrieve it and as she neared her chamber door, she heard the voices of her maids as they tore off her old sheets and replaced them with fresh ones.

“Such a pity, with Prince Trystane growing more handsome everyday and his fool of a father chained him to that Lannister bastard,” one of the maids said.

“Well, she was a pretty girl once.”

“Once is not now,” her laugh was short and harsh, “He’ll marry her but I’ll wager he will saddle her with bastards with all those pretty lords’ daughters ready to greet him with open legs. Poor child.”

Myrcella knew she should go in there, that a princess should not suffer the snide remarks of common maids but in that moment, she felt not like a Baratheon of Storm’s End of a Lannister of Casterly Rock but a wounded child. She turned and ran, feeling the tears falling warm across her face, before she felt the impact of her body hitting against someone’s strong frame. She fell to the floor with a painful thud and looked up to see Trystane’s laughing ( _He is handsome like they said_ , she thought, _and his smile is so wonderful. My laughter used to be wonderful too, my face was once beautiful like his. But once is not now_ ). He leaned down to help her to her feet.

“Where are you off to? Is there some terrible fiend after you, should I run for my sword?”

He noticed Myrcella’s tears.

“Don’t look so glum, I’ve been practicing and I think I can probably bring down a faceless assassin or two if it came to it.”

Myrcella couldn’t help but smile.

Trystane continued, “I thought we might go for a walk today, if it please you.”

She let him take her arm in his as he led her out to the sea shore. He took her by the cove where they often liked to sit. It was a beautiful secluded area, where they could lie in the shade and watch the water lap up against the rocks and sand. Trystane sat down and kicked off his shoes, patting the ground beside him so that she would do the same.

“Are you going to tell me what happened or must we sit here roasting in the sun all afternoon?” He asked.

Myrcella noticed the drops of perspiration were already on his upper lip and there was sweat seeping into the back of his shirt. She thought of one of the idiot Dornish girls kissing those lips, putting their arms around him, sitting with him by the sea, and suddenly she wanted to scream.

“Trystane, do you think I’m ugly?"

He stared at her, looking almost comically perplexed. “Are you japing?”

She sighed, “This isn’t a game, Trystane. My feelings won’t be hurt, I promise. I know half my face is ruined, I’m not a fool. And if you were awfully in love with someone else and wanted me to go back to King’s Landing, I would. I know how other women look at you—”

“How do they look at me?” He asked with a laugh.

For once, Myrcella didn’t want to hear his laugh, “They look at you as if… They look at you like—”

He interrupted again, “They look at me the way I look at you.”

Before she could react, Myrcella suddenly felt his warm lips on the corner of her mouth. She had thought her first kiss would be less hesitant, especially from a man like Trystane who never did anything without his whole force, but the tender way which he placed his mouth on hers reminded her of that day when he showed her his scar and took her hand in his. She pushed her lips towards him and deepened the kiss, her heart pounding so loudly in her chest she thought that even he could hear it. Trystane wrapped his hands in her hair before pulling away and placing a kiss on her the very tip of her scar, on the point where the Darkstar had made that first horrible impact with his blade. He moved his way down, kissing every inch of her scar slowly and deliberately. It reminded Myrcella of her old story books, of the prince who would find the sleeping princess and try to wake her with a kiss - except she was already awake, more awake than she’d ever been, and his kisses were turning her to fire.

By the time his kisses reached the very end of her scar on her jaw line, Myrcella felt as though her whole body was shaking. As he placed one last kiss on her lips, taking her bottom lip in his mouth for a fraction of a second, she threw herself in his arms and felt herself dissolve into tears.

He sighed, “Was it really so awful? It’s my first time after all, I promise I’ll get better with practice.”

Myrcella grabbed a handful of sand and made as if to throw it in his face before he laughed and took her hands in his.

“Do you love me Trystane?”

“I’m awfully fond of you if that’s what you mean.”

Myrcella pouted, “Do you love me, truly?”

“I love you, truly.”

“Will you ever love another?”

He grinned, “My kisses seem to drive women to tears so I’m not sure anyone else would have me.”

“Be serious for once,” Myrcella insisted, moving in closer so their noses were touching.

“I shall never love another, that I promise you.”

She moved her lips so they were only a fraction of an inch from his, and he could feel her breath on his mouth.

“Trystane, do you think I’m pretty?”

“Always.”


End file.
